Priorities Proposals

Both SSB and VR are under MN Department of Employment and Economic Development (MN DEED). But funded by Federal on direct service while state funding staff payroll. So I am asking NAD to address this issue to Congress to fund the State Service of Deaf to address employment issues. Provide training and support transition students and support any age of post education training.

State Service for the Blind URL –

http://mn.gov/deed/job-seekers/blind-visual-impaired/

We move that we continue with the Education Strategy Team (EST) from the 2014-2016 Priorities into the 2016-2018 Priorities with few modifications.

Whereas the Delegates to the 2012 NAD Conference passed a Language Deprivation mandate proposed by four past NAD presidents and three past NAD executives, among others, requiring the NAD to set up a Headquarters Ad-Hoc Committee to look into developing model state and federal legislation to prevent language deprivation into 2016-2018.

Whereas this mandate required the formation of a headquarters Ad-Hoc committee reporting to the CEO comprised of individuals with expertise in various relevant areas including legal, educational and socio- and neuro-linguistic development to look into the possibility of making liable actions that causes harm to Deaf children as a result of the deprivation of American Sign Language and develop model state and federal legislation for such liability.

Whereas this mandate required the committee to look into developing model state and federal legislation that would require medical and audiology personnel to include deaf infants/children and their families to American Sign Language instruction and education prior to undertaking any medical procedure that may presume to provide hearing.

Whereas this mandate required that the committee develop a strategy for the adoption of these legislation including identifying the states that may be most favorable as early adopters of those legislation and provide State Associations the recommended state strategies.

Whereas this mandate requires a full report including the first draft of a model legislation.

Let it be further resolved that the 2012 Mandate be passed once again as a 2016 Mandate with the same procedures, requirements and a deadline of the report and model legislation by March 31, 2018.”

“Past attempts through the educational system to ensure that Deaf children are not isolated and linguistically deprived have experienced extremely limited success. The EST will continue to explore alternative approaches and share with the State Associations.

This motion is timely because the United Nations developed and adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”) to advance equality further throughout the world. The CRPD makes repeated specific references to the deaf community and sign language in its text.

“Children acquire language without instruction as long as they are regularly and meaningfully engaged with an accessible human language. Today, 80% of children born deaf in the developed world are implanted with cochlear devices that allow some of them access to sound in their early years, which helps them to develop speech. However, through early childhood, brain plasticity changes and children who have not acquired a first language in the early years might never be completely fluent in any language. If they miss this critical period for exposure to a natural language, their subsequent development of the cognitive activities that rely on a solid first language might be underdeveloped, such as literacy, memory organization, and number manipulation. An alternative to speech-exclusive approaches to language acquisition exists in the use of sign languages such as American Sign Language (ASL), where acquiring a sign language is subject to the same time constraints of spoken language development. Unfortunately, so far, these alternatives are caught up in an “either – or” dilemma, leading to a highly polarized conflict about which system families should choose for their children, with little tolerance for alternatives by either side of the debate and widespread misinformation about the evidence and implications for or against either approach. The success rate with cochlear implants is highly variable. This issue is still debated, and as far as we know, there are no reliable predictors for success with implants. Yet families are often advised not to expose their child to sign language. Here absolute positions based on ideology create pressures for parents that might jeopardize the real developmental needs of deaf children. What we do know is that cochlear implants do not offer accessible language to many deaf children. By the time it is clear that the deaf child is not acquiring spoken language with cochlear devices, it might already be past the critical period, and the child runs the risk of becoming linguistically deprived. Linguistic deprivation constitutes multiple personal harms as well as harms to society (in terms of costs to our medical systems and in loss of potential productive societal participation).”

Because Headquarters have the legal staff and interns along with necessary key relationships with those having needed expertise, the EST committee should report to the CEO.

Vision 2020: Objectives 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 3.2, and 3.4

1. Limited involvement of lobbyists to few minutes in limited general assembly;

2. Lobbyists couldn’t defend their motions in five regional caucuses at the same time;

3. Informed delegates are decentralized throughout five regional caucuses;

4. Un-informed delegates tend to prioritize only the motions they are familiar with; and

5. Involvement of interested non-delegated members are minimal, if any;

Advantages of restoring special interest committees of interested delegates and interested members are as follows:

1. All interested delegates, regardless of regions, would be centralized to review the priorities effectively;

2. Lobbyists will be able to centralize their efforts to informed delegates;

3. Interested members would be able to centralize their promotions to informed delegates effectively;

4. More members who are not delegates would be more motivated to be more involved in NAD activities; and

5. Results of prioritization would be more effective and influential.

The said regional conferences represented a total of 44 State Associations including 107 affiliates.   After five NLTC events, which will always focus on effective leadership skills, we are still missing the camaraderie on each regional and state level, especially in view of its particular cultural and sectional integrity.

While the ever-increasing NAD social media is an important communication tool on the national level, State Associations and Affiliates duly need to feel less disenfranchised by having its own specialized Community Relations and Partnerships Coordinator to focus on national, state and local issues.

By establishing the NAD office position working with state associations and affiliates, each State Association and affiliate will have a direct liaison with this Coordinator on state/national affairs to develop strategic partnerships in areas of community relations and support services on national, state or local levels.   By doing so, other arms of NAD operations such as the Legal and Advocacy Center (LAC) will be less burdened with dealing issues other than legal issues.

Such a position will result in opportunities for a platform to encourage greater dialogue by putting together regional conferences or many more mini-conferences to deal with issue-oriented strategies and ensure a much clearer process leading to each NAD national conference.

Opportunities for building relationships with the NAD Board and Headquarters through state associations and affiliates will be maximized with this Coordinator position.

The caucus structure during the Council of Representatives meetings at NAD conferences will be strengthened by this Coordinator by working with the NAD Board and Headquarters to ensure maximum and effective participation by delegates of state associations and affiliates.

2. NAD needs to consider if consolidation with organizational partners would complement and enhance NAD’s operations, efficiency and bottom line in ways such that the post-merger entity would achieve more than the sum of the individual legacy parts.

3. It may make fiscal and operational sense for NAD to be a larger organization with membership sections that serve subsets of the community, i.e. hard-of-hearing, senior citizens, LGBTQI, interpreters, etc.

4. Further, a merger with a professional association of sign language interpreters may improve the relationship between the Deaf and interpreting communities and enhance delivery and quality of related services.

5. Additionally, a merger with select organizations may enable expansion of desired community intervention, outcomes and impact at a faster pace and/or create greater visibility and leverage towards attracting new funding sources.

2. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 30 percent of adults 65-74 years old and 47 percent of adults 75 years old or older, have hearing loss. A significant percentage of those subsets are Deaf.

3. The establishment of retirement communities for the American Deaf senior community will enable residents’ access to fully accessible and specialized medical facilities and staff who are fluent in American Sign Language. More important, these retirement communities will enable continued, full participation in the American Deaf community.

4. However, the Federal government has asserted that senior citizen facilities built specifically for Deaf seniors violate Federal housing discrimination rules.

5. Ideally, the strategy will be one that leads to a Congressional authorization that establishes Federally-funded retirement communities for American Deaf senior citizens and in the same manner and spirit as the Education of the Deaf Act (Public Law 99-371, as amended) which authorized the creation and continued funding of Gallaudet University and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID).

Decisions to remove children from homes and placed in the CPS system are not consistent throughout the United States and often depend on the individual caseworker. Knowledge and willingness to adhere to best practices for children whose first language is ASL is not consistently adhered to.

Hearing children removed from Deaf homes are often placed in homes where the primary spoken language is English.  Depending on the process of reunification, parents and children are losing their bonding time – which affects the bonding assessments.

As with the Deaf children being removed from their (deaf or hearing) family, the state becomes the legal guardian.  The state’s lack of awareness on the deaf child’s needs will impact the child’s education growth and medical needs.  The child may be at risk of being deprived of their human rights and access to American Sign Language.

National Association of the Deaf has published position statements and we are in need of a CPS legal strategy team to address serious issues with the CPS system.  The CPS legal strategy team will come up with strategies that will be used on state level collaborating with State Associations and/or Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

•             Centralized healthcare information

•             Increases awareness

•             Improves self-advocacy

•             Bridge societal and environmental barriers

•             Enhances decision making

•             Maximizes access

•             Reinforces individuals independence

•             Improves quality of life

•             Increases healthcare literacy

Foreign Language Agencies: I have seen over and over the increase of foreign language providers adding ASL interpreting services without any real cultural or linguistic understanding of what it means to provide highly qualified interpreters – many foreign language agencies do not partake State Interpreting Conferences, NAD, or RID Conferences; it is these type of conferences where agencies and interpreters get to be educated on the trends of interpreting and how to strengthen interpreting services for the local community. For case in point, at the most recent Missouri Association for the Deaf (MoAD) conference, there were two foreign language agency representatives there with no knowledge of ASL; they did not even think to request an interpreter or at least bring an ASL interpreter to interact with the MoAD members.

National Agencies:  We are witnessing an increase of national agencies subcontracting local agencies which in turn takes the financial value away from the local community and instead is displaced back to the headquarters of these national agencies.

More and more national and foreign language companies are using VRI as an alternative.  What I am seeing more and more are hospitals adopting VRI from these companies with no clear training or education as to the use of VRI.  This in turn weakens the quality of communication access to the deaf patients, takes away the financial investment from local interpreting agencies to these national companies, and a division between the healthcare providers and the local community which is caused by an outsider with no clear connection to the local issues of the deaf community.

At best, NAD ought to establish stronger standards and guidelines of practice. Position papers are not sufficient enough – there needs to be  strong clear standards for interpreting agencies to be able to adhere and comply.

2. Using data-driven research available from the NSF Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2), NAD shall design, develop, implement and maintain a collaborative strategy to have nationwide Deaf educational and advocacy organizations and programs include and preserve American Sign Language as an inherent human right in their organizational and programmatic missions and core values.

3. NAD shall explore the feasibility of developing and executing a legislative strategy towards Federal and state legislation recognizing the American Deaf community as a protected class with the inherent right to learn and use American Sign Language.

4. NAD shall explore the feasibility of developing and executing a legislative strategy towards enacting and/or amending Federal and state legislation requiring national- and state-based Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI), LRE/ IDEA and other programs to recognize, include and preserve American Sign Language as an inherent human right.

6. NAD shall rally the American Deaf community to join the movement and educate members as to their roles and responsibilities.

2. A coalition is a temporary alliance or partnering of groups in order to achieve a common purpose. Coalition building is the process by which parties come together to form a coalition. Forming coalitions with other groups of similar values, interests and goals allows members to combine resources and become more powerful than when they each acted alone.

3. The research efforts of the VL2 initiative recognize that early ASL acquisition positively affects Deaf children’s cognitive, social and economic development and literacy skills. Language and cultural deprivation must end for it has negative effects whereas sign language acquisition and participation in the American Deaf community have overwhelmingly positive effects.

2. The Law and Advocacy Center would lead the design, development and execution of legislative strategies leading to the recognition of the Deaf community as a protected class with the inherent right to American Sign Language; and requiring national- and state-based EHDI, IDEA and other programs to recognize, include and preserve American Sign Language as an inherent right.

3. The Public Policy Committee, Education Strategy Team and Bioethics Expert Group would execute and continuously evaluate the vitality of the collaborative strategy with NAD affiliates and Deaf educational and advocacy organizations and programs.

While AzAD cannot say on behalf of other DGM state chapters, the AZ chapter became disorganized and did not get most of their to-do list completed. They shied from local assistance as result of NAD’s lukewarm response to the DGM movement to the point of being overwhelmed and distressed.  They requested assistance from AzAD two weeks before the May 4th Rally. AzAD, along with other local organizations, stepped in and offer our board members, guidance and resources while allowing the DGM leader retain their positional leaderships.  The May 4th Rally was a huge success despite the very last-minute flurries of action.

The similar situations happened in other state’s chapters as well hence this priority proposal.  NAD needs to adopt similar model used by local organizations of partnership, collaboration, guidance, staff and resources while keeping the supported organization/movement’s leadership intact, leading to a successful outcome.

Successful outcome bolster the confidence of the organization and promotes them to continue with their efforts.  NAD has the cruical role as the leader of the deaf organizations and movements as much as the educational and political arenas.

Rationale. Currently there’s only one deaf lawyer who is planning to retire in a few years. We may lose our impact with an important agency that monitors our rights.